Writing Fiction Quotes

• Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

  Stephen King

  Life, Beautiful, Truth

  Stephen King (2011). “Danse Macabre”, p.430, Simon and Schuster

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• A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

  Richard Bach

  Perseverance, Writing, Editing

  Richard Bach (2012). “A Gift of Wings”, p.9, Dell

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• When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Gun, Men

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Effort, Needs

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.25, Anchor

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• How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Beautiful, Book

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.8, Penguin

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• When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Powerful, Writing, Character

  Ernest Hemingway (2002). “Death in the Afternoon”, p.153, Simon and Schuster

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• The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Dog, Writing, Sisterhood

  Ernest Hemingway (2016). “The Sun Also Rises”, p.37, Hamilton Books

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• Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Past, Ideas

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• Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Life, Being Alone, Writing

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• Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Nature, Rain, Writing

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• Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created - nothing.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Writing, Individual, Type

  "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz: And Other Stories".

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• Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan and a course laid out.

  John Gardner

  Writing, Sea, Helping

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• Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

  Anton Chekhov

  Inspirational, Writing, Moon

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• I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Writing, Successful, Interesting

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• If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Character, Passion

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• The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

  William Faulkner

  Dream, Writing, Artist

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• If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Writing, Odds, Stories

  "King of the Jungle" by John J. Miller, reason.com. August/September 1999.

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• The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

  Stephen King

  Movie, Writing, Sisterhood

  FaceBook post by Stephen King from Feb 06, 2013

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• My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, Writing, Stories

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• Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

  J. P. Donleavy

  Writing, Worst Moments, Moments

  Quoted in Playboy, May 1979

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• It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

  William Faulkner

  Moving, Writing, Character

  William Faulkner, Joseph L. Fant, Robert Paul Ashley (1964). “Faulkner at West Point”, p.101, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Funny Life, Writing, Sound

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• There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

  Terry Pratchett

  Block, Writing, California

  Interview with SFBC's Joyce Wiley, www.lspace.org. 1996.

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• There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Bad Ass, Typewriters

  "Exclusive: Never-Before-Seen Photos from Hemingway's Childhood" by James Joiner, www.esquire.com. October 24, 2013.

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• It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.

  C. J. Cherryh

  Writing, Long, Garbage

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